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Occupy Wall Street or Teaparty: which is more fake?

Posted Thu, Oct 10, 2011 at 8:24 am

Occupy Wall Street ("OWS") as a movement appears to be about as fake as the Tea Parties as a movement. Some or many OWS members seem to support a policy that harms the lower and middle classes while it further enriches the rich. That policy lowers wages and increases costs on the lower and middle classes while enriching bankers and corrupt businesses and giving more power to corrupt politicians. That policy is closely associated with the elites and is in fact one of the few policies that virtually all elites agree on. It's also one of the policies where the elites have the lowest amount of popular support and where the elites are most vulnerable to good arguments.

The policy, of course, is massive and illegal immigration.

The establishment is very much in favor of massive and/or illegal immigration: it enriches corrupt banks and businesses, while politicians and racial power groups rely on it to obtain power. It's also an indicator of massive public and private corruption, as those corrupt banks and businesses seek to profit from illegal activity and in effect pay off politicians to turn a blind eye. Almost all establishment figures support at least massive if not illegal immigration, and outside of a few House members it's difficult to find any establishment figures who are truly opposed to illegal immigration (those who just pretend to oppose it don't count). At the same time, poll after poll shows that the great majority of Americans oppose illegal immigration and many or most oppose massive immigration in general. And, why shouldn't they? The benefits of massive and illegal immigration flow upward, to those who want a ready supply of domestic labor or crop pickers and to the banks who want to process the money that illegal aliens earn.

And, Occupy Wall Street appears to be on the side of the elites on that issue.

Compare that with the teapartiers. While many individual teapartiers are mostly on the right side of immigration, as a movement they've largely ignored the issue for two and a half years, and no doubt a great part of that is because their real leaders such as Dick Armey of FreedomWorks and the Koch family are on the wrong side of the issue.

Yes, that means that Occupy Wall Street appears to be on the same side of immigration as Charles and David Koch.

Obviously, OWS has even less intellectual output than the teapartiers. So, some might be on the right side. But, what I've seen on Twitter isn't good. And - just like the teapartiers - those elites who promote OWS are definitely on the wrong side of the issue.

For instance, this picture is captioned NYC Radical Cheerleaders drawing a sizable crowd: "Unemployment and inflation.. are not caused by immigration!"

That picture was posted (yfrog.com/o0zm3wuj) by one of their leaders (@theother99) and no doubt reflects the views of many there (if any OWS participants don't agree with the Radical Cheerleaders, leave a comment).

And, those who promote OccupyWallSt include massive/illegal immigration supporters like Katrina vanden Heuvel and her employees Chris Hayes and Greg Mitchell. In addition to supporting an immigration policy that harms lower and middle class Americans, vanden Heuvel is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), aka "Banksters Central". If anyone can find a nationally-known figure who promotes OWS and is on the right side of immigration, make sure and leave a comment.